Home > What We Do > Why Maryland Needs a Statewide Afterschool Network

We need the Maryland Out of School Time Network because...

1. There aren't enough afterschool and summer learning opportunities.

As much as eighty percent of a school age young person’s time is spent outside of school.

In our state, 28 % or 270,873 of K-12 youth are unsupervised for an average of 10 hours per week.

243,000 children are at risk of hunger in Maryland. Afterschool and summer programs provide critical opportunities to supply children with snack and meals.

2. When young people participate in afterschool and summer learning, they do better!

Adolescents in high-quality programs were more likely to avoid risky behaviors, to have better performance in school, and to have greater social competence, over and above the control variables, than those in no program

The annual cost for OST programs ranges from $500 - $4000 per year per young person, as compared to an average cost of $86,000 per youth for juvenile incarceration.

3. Maryland doesn't have a "Department of Afterschool"

Afterschool and Summer programs are funded and monitored through a variety of funding sources

MOST provides opportunities for sharing best practices, developing common language around quality, and advocating for common sense policies to support out of school time.

References: Educational Research Information Center, United State Department of Education; After School Alliance: Maryland After 3 PM (2009); Governor’s Partnership to End Childhood Hunger by 2015; Child Trends. How out-of-school time program quality is related to adolescent outcomes. (2010)